sea of matrimony, 'fetching up' at the Ourang Outang Islands, just in the wane of the honeymoon, strong in the belief that the fate of heathen millions, long since unborn (as Mrs. Partington inight say,) lay in their matrimonial hands."

XXXIX.

WHAT FOWLER SAYS.

FOWLER, the phrenologist, who, probably, never

saw Fanny Fern, sanctions and publishes the following from one of her friends-honest John Walter, we suspect. The reader who has perused the preceding pages can judge of its truthfulness:

"Fanny Fern is the most retiring and unobtrusive of human beings. More than any other celebrity we have ever known, she shrinks from personal display and public observation. During her residence in this city she has lived in the most perfect privacy, never going to parties or soirees, never giving such herself, refusing to enlarge her circle of friends, and finding full employment as well as satisfaction in her domestic and literary duties. She has probably received more invitations to pri

vate and public assemblies, and her acquaintance has been more frequently sought by distinguished persons, during the period of her residence here, than any other individual. To all solicitations of this kind she returns a mild but decided negative. In the hotels at which she has resided, no one, neither landlord nor guest, has ever known her as Fanny Fern. Indeed, she has an abhorrence of personal publicity, and cannot be persuaded to sacrifice any part of the comfort of an absolute incog. We cannot but approve her resolution.

"Fanny Fern is a sincerely religious woman, the member of an evangelical denomination, and a regular attendant at church. We never knew any one who believed in a belief more strongly than she in hers, or who was more deeply grieved when that belief was treated with disrespect. No one stands less in awe of conventionalities, no one is more strict on a point of honor and principle than she. She is a person who is able to do all that she is convinced she ought, and to refrain from doing all that she is sure she ought not. In strength of purpose, we know not her equal among women.

"The word which best describes Fanny Fern is the word Lady. All her ways and tastes are feminine and refined. Everything she wears, every article of furniture in her rooms, all the details of

Her at

her table, must be clean, elegant, tasteful. tire, which is generally simple and inexpensive, is always exquisitely nice and becoming. In the stormiest days, when no visitor could be expected, she is as carefully dressed and adorned as though she was going to court. We say as carefully, though, in fact, she has a quick instinct for the becoming, and makes herself attractive without bestowing much time or thought upon the matter. Her voice is singularly musical; her manner varies with her humor; but it is always that of a lady. One who knows Fanny Fern has an idea what kind of women they must have been for whom knights-errant did battle in the Middle Ages.

"With all her strength, Fanny Fern is extremely sensitive. She can enjoy more, suffer more, love more, hate more, admire more and detest more, than any one whom we have known. With all her gentleness of manner, there is not a drop of milk and water in her veins. She believes in having justice done. Seventy times and seven she could forgive a repentant brother; but not once, unless he repented.

"Fanny Fern writes rapidly, in a large, bold hand; but she sends no article away without very careful revision; and her manuscript is puzzling to printers from its numberless erasures and inser

tions. She writes from her heart and her eye; she has little aptitude or taste for abstract thought. She never talks of her writings, and cares little for criticism, however severe. She is no more capable of writing an intentional double entendre, than the gross-minded men who have accused her of doing so are capable of appreciating the worth of pure womanhood.

"Such are some of our impressions of Fanny Fern, to which we may add, that she has the finest form of any woman in New York, and that no one of the names recently assigned her in the papers is her true name. In ordinary circumstances, we should not have thought it right thus to describe the characteristics of a lady; our sole, and we think, sufficient justification is, the publication of statements respecting her, only less vulgar than calumnious."